Minchev, Grant (2018) A Sustainable Focus on Rural Town Main Streets & Highway Initiatives. [USQ Project]
Abstract
Australia’s road development industry started over 100 years ago, since then road development design, practices and planning has evolved immensely and will continue to do so. This evolution was driven by new construction methods, materials, technology, transport modes and most importantly, the way our communities’ function.
The purpose of this study was to gather information about the common issues for highways passing through commercial areas of rural towns in the road development industry and to assess barriers to developing sustainable outcomes to these towns. The methodology of the research required the data of one Main Street Highway (MSH) case study to be gathered along with broader key characteristics of example current MSH towns and example former MSH towns.
Broad Street, Sarina in Queensland was selected as the case study for this research due to the current need for town centre and road development upgrades. The research project analysed the issues identified by the Sarina Revitalisation case study, formulated five (5) common issues of MSH’s and reviewed design solutions proposed in terms of their sustainable outcomes. The design solutions enabling sustainable outcomes were supported by international MSH literature in the form of standards, guidelines and case studies and best practice measures were recommended to contest the current barriers of Australian MSH’s.
From this conclusion, the project progressed to offer recommendations for better implementation of sustainable outcomes on MSH’s within Australia.
The recommendations include; State Road Authorities (SRA’s) are more open to relaxation of some standard parameters in a MSH environment; continued collaboration of SRA’s and Local Governments (LG’s) to establish balanced road corridor outcomes; SRA’s to be more considerate of the unique characteristics of towns and needs of community within the road corridor to enable long-term sustainable outcomes for the main street function; and finally this paper supports the need for the development of national guidelines on MSH’s and best practices.
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Statistics for this ePrint Item |
| Item Type: | USQ Project |
|---|---|
| Item Status: | Live Archive |
| Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: | Historic - Faculty of Health, Engineering and Sciences - School of Civil Engineering and Surveying (1 Jul 2013 - 31 Dec 2021) |
| Supervisors: | Thorpe, David; Klein, Greg |
| Qualification: | Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Civil) |
| Date Deposited: | 31 Aug 2022 02:59 |
| Last Modified: | 29 Jun 2023 01:58 |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Dual-purpose highway, highway bypass, main street highway, high street, sustainable roads |
| URI: | https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/40711 |
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